TV Fact-Checkers: Breaking Down Breaking Bad’s Dark Chemistry

Illustration: Simon Lutrin/Wired

Behind every smart TV show, there is a tireless script coordinator, technical adviser, researcher or producer who makes sure the jargon is right, the science is accurate and the pop culture references are on-point. To get a better sense of who keeps the angry nerds at bay, Wired checks in with fact-checkers behind TV’s geekiest shows.

If there’s one thing constantly running through the heads of nerds watching Breaking Bad, it’s that Walter White might be the most badass chemist of all time.

Most of the badass part comes from the skills of Bryan Cranston, who plays the chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cooker, but the chemist part comes from the diligent work of researchers Gordon Smith and Jenn Carroll, who make sure every molecular formula that comes out of the character’s mouth is perfect.

“Since we’ve done much of the legwork before the writing, it’s usually pretty accurate by that point,” Smith said in an e-mail to Wired. “It’s less a fact-check than it is a conversation that avoids factual errors by building from the ground up.”

Neither Smith nor Carroll are scientists; in fact, both of them started on the AMC show as production assistants. But now that they’ve climbed the ranks –Smith is a writers’ assistant and Carroll is script coordinator — they spend hours working on each script, consulting reference works and contacting scientific and law-enforcement sources to make sure all the plotlines on Breaking Bad, which received 13 Emmy nominations Thursday, are plausible. (And effectively making the concept of your high-waisted-pants-wearing high school chemistry teacher transformation into a drug lord the most unbelievable thing about the show.)

Wired asked Smith and Carroll about taking out surveillance cameras, criminal chemistry and how they get cooking on each Breaking Bad script.

TV Fact-Checkers: Jenn Carroll and Gordon Smith

Titles: Smith is a writers’ assistant and assistant to the executive producer, Carroll is script coordinator and writers’ production assistant, Breaking Bad (Sundays at 10 p.m./9 p.m. Central on AMC)

Bona fides:

“I’m not very well-qualified,” says Smith, “but I’m very lucky. I have an M.F.A. in film production from the University of Southern California. I’ve worked freelance as a writer and editor for some independent films and web series, and spent a year at the Department of Defense writing letters for the Secretary of the Army.”

“I have a bachelor’s in film/TV from Boston University,” says Carroll, “and spent my final semester interning in Los Angeles on the soap General Hospital and the Adult Swim send-up of such hospital-based soaps, Childrens Hospital. After temping for a bit, I worked as an office production assistant on TNT’s Men of a Certain Age, and that led me to Breaking Bad.”

What’s your method for researching any given episode?

“We’ve done searches for all kinds of crazy, usually illegal things. I’m just waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to come knocking.”

— Gordon Smith

Smith: “Our process is different than a lot of shows, I think. Since we’re so serialized, all of the story is broken in the room, so the writers don’t go off on their own and then come back with stories or ideas we have to check. Generally, someone will pitch an idea, and I’ll check it in a cursory fashion in the room while taking notes, just to see if it’s within the vague realm of possibility. This means we’ve done searches for all kinds of crazy, usually illegal things. (I’m just waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to come knocking.)”

What happens once it passes that initial smell-test?

Smith: “If it gets traction, then usually I’ll send Jenn an e-mail to start digging online to see what we can present to the writers in the vein of what they’re working on. Sometimes, it’s as simple as finding the technical specs of a device or formula and presenting it. More often, it gets sticky. If it merits more research, we’ll order books or supplementary material (videos, documentaries, whatnot) and figure out which of us should take point. We don’t have a lot of the resources or money of a network show, so we have to allocate our time carefully.”

Do you ever reach out to professionals in a given field?

Smith: “Often, at this point we’ll try to reach out to an expert. Since we deal with law, drugs, chemistry, science, medicine and a variety of other subjects, we have specialists we work with for numerous things. We have wonderful, truly gracious law enforcement contacts at the Drug Enforcement Administration, who are active agents that help us with both procedure and chemistry. We have a fantastic chemistry consultant in Dr. Donna Nelson of the University of Oklahoma who has helped us figure out innumerable chemical problems. We’ve used the services of Hollywood, Health and Society and the Entertainment Industries Council, two organizations that put TV professionals in touch with specialists in the science and medical fields.

Whoever the appropriate expert is, we’ll try to get in touch with them. Sometimes, that means calling on friends and family. One of our writers has a brother who’s a fantastic oncologist and has helped since Season 1 to ground Walt’s illness and treatment; another’s father is a specialist in hazardous-waste cleanup and compliance (which came up in Season 4); my mom’s a tax attorney who I consulted with when we had a storyline revolving around Internal Revenue Service agents.”

Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul, left) and Walter White (Bryan Cranston), all suited up in their meth-lab gear.Photo:Frank Ockenfels/AMC

A lot of the chemistry on the show involves Walt explaining how certain interactions work. I was just re-watching the first episode from Season 4 and was struck by the complex explanation Walt gives to Victor in Gus’ lab. Is that something Donna Nelson advised on?

Smith: “Yeah, that’s a good example. We had a baseline of what the shape of the scene was and some of the dialog, and we sent it to Dr. Nelson, who then corrected the chemistry where we’d gone off, and offered suggestions for some really great language that Walt, as a chemist, would know. It was the kind of thing that would have taken forever for us to really parse out on our own.”

What happens after you get expert input? How is it incorporated?

Smith: “We either put the writer of an episode in touch with the experts directly, or gather the information, write up a memo, and give it to them to digest as they work on the script. When scripts come in, we can then make sure that the writers have the same understanding of the research as we do and can offer suggestions to amend or double-check if something seems a little off.”

What do you do if something comes up that’s not of the typical meth-cooking, police-crackdown variety?

Carroll: “Sometimes, on an episodic basis, we come across subjects to research that fall outside our usual science-and-law-enforcement wheelhouse. When that has happened, we’ve reached out to some very specific resources — some of which I can’t get into because they’re spoilers! — which include speaking with recently retired and inactive government regulatory specialists. Basically, the people who wrote the book on any given subject, and have the time to chat about all the details. I’m fortunate to have friends who work on other shows as researchers, so whenever I hit a wall finding an expert, I’ll call them up to see if they can put me in touch with someone they’ve worked with.”

Cool! [Jumps with nerdy glee at the idea of a vast network of TV Fact-Checkers] Are you on-set when the show is filmed? Do you advise or interact with actors?

Smith: “Not usually, and if we are, we consult directly with the writers who can make the call on any questions that come up about facts.”

“One day, Gordon and the writers asked me to figure out a way to knock out a surveillance camera, or — at the very least — to make a passerby invisible to the camera. As you might imagine, there aren’t many legal or convenient ways to go about this.”

— Jenn Carroll

What about the current season? Name one thing in the season premiere that you had to check, and tell us how you went about researching it. Did you catch any errors?

Carroll: “In the Season 5 premiere, Mike [played by Jonathan Banks] approaches the entrance to a police station, and he uses the wasp spray to take out a surveillance camera high above the gate. It’s a cool effect, because you’re watching from the camera’s point of view, and you see the screen get completely obscured by the thick liquid.”

Oh yeah, that was awesome! So there’s more than one way to take out a surveillance camera?

Carroll: “One day, Gordon and the writers asked me to figure out a way to knock out a surveillance camera, or — at the very least — to make a passerby invisible to the camera. As you might imagine, there aren’t many legal or convenient ways to go about this. We did some searching (mostly looking into recent bank robberies and art heists — though, much to my dismay, the police did not often explain how the criminals got past the cameras), and came up with a list to present to the writers — everything from infra-red LED headdresses to hoses of spray-paint. But the idea that sparked the interest of [show creator] Vince Gilligan and the writers was a pressurized can of wasp spray — the kind that could hit nests 20 feet up in the air. So, they took that detail and ran with it.”

What’s the biggest goof or error you’ve seen in a script?

Carroll: “We try to catch goofs before they get to script. Most of what we catch are errors in arithmetic and math. We make sure that everything’s consistent — numbers established in one episode carry on to the next, and we keep the writers up-to-date on what’s going on in the room when they’re out writing. Story editor Gennifer Hutchison is the master of the show’s timeline, so we often consult with her when there’s a question about the passage of time.”

Has an error ever made it on air?

Smith: “It’s very, very rare for a genuine goof to make it to air, since if we miss it at the script stage, our production departments will usually catch it when they’re doing their research. If something still gets through to being shot, our post-production team catches it and we’ll figure out a way to alter it digitally or in the cut. And all along the way, there’s Vince, who has an uncanny eye for spotting mistakes and glitches during production reviews — very little gets past him the first time. The few things that remain are so small, you’d have to look long and hard to find them.”

Do you ever try to pitch plot ideas or other show details? If so, how much luck have you had?

Carroll: “It’s a collaborative environment, but our biggest input tends to come in the form of assessing ideas at first blush and making recommendations. We help prioritize the research so that we have our best foot forward and the writers are choosing from ideas that we think are the best of the best. For example, last season they couldn’t look at every poison that had ricin-like symptoms — there’s a surprising number! — so we had to look around, find several and make some recommendations on which seemed to fit the bill best for the story. Then we presented the top few candidates and what they had to recommend them, and Vince and the writers made a choice of Lily of the Valley. When something we think is the coolest or most perfect choice resonates with the writers — that’s when it feels like we’re making a solid contribution to the story.”